Warlord: King of All Clans

The first round of artillery fire was loaded with stone bullets. The ogre gunners who were responsible for polishing the stone bullets all crowded around the city breakers, with their ears pressed against their foreheads, waiting to fire.

It would be better to call them stonemasons rather than kobold artillerymen. Kobolds have a racial talent for mining, and their stonemasonry skills are also quite good, which are fully utilized in them.

Almost every stone ball has been polished into a smooth and perfect sphere.

This group of devilishly muscular gnolls serve as assistants to human artillerymen. They understand basic artillery casting techniques and are usually responsible for carrying out tasks and doing odd jobs in the artillery workshop, as well as forging rough parts and casting shells.

Using the advanced tools at the Riverbend Workshops, they are also able to cast smaller artillery pieces such as the Centurion individually.

But now the Centurion artillery is about to be listed as an obsolete product by Hewan and is almost no longer produced.

As the technology of the river bend continues to upgrade, these kobold craftsmen are becoming less and less useful, so they work particularly hard, fearing that they will lose their jobs.

Seeing the stone bullets they had polished being fired by human gunners, they all barked excitedly.

Amid the deafening roar, everyone around the city-breaker became temporarily deaf.

The huge stone bullet was fired from the short and thick muzzle of the city-breaker, flew high in front of everyone, and hit the wall of Clemens in a parabola.

As it approached the city wall, a huge curtain was stimulated to reveal its true appearance, like a calm lake hit by a stone, causing huge ripples.

This is the defensive formation of the city of Clemens. Because of its existence, the catapults outside the city have not been able to damage even a single brick of the city wall during this period.

Grant's Legion also sent catapults to the battlefield, not far from the City Breaker No. 1, but they were closer to the city wall and the stone shells they threw were relatively smaller.

It hit the defensive formation, and the ripples it emitted were only one-tenth of the stone bullets fired by the city destroyers, almost invisible to the naked eye.

Grant was also very excited when he saw the size of the ripples emitted by the defensive magic circle. He commented: "It's really amazing. Three cannonballs are equivalent to thirty slingshots!"

But Leo was not satisfied. This stone bullet was used to deal with the walls of Abros. The local branch city had no protection from defensive arrays and the thickness of the stone wall was limited. Stone bullets weighing hundreds of kilograms were enough to destroy the wall.

With the help of the city breakers, ordinary medieval castles can only become broken tiles and ruins.

But when they arrived at the Earl's main city, such a heavy attack could not even destroy the defensive magic circle.

On the city wall, Count Fred Beboos looked at the ripples of the defensive magic circle and felt a little relieved.

Unlike his brother Godwin, he is a mid-level wizard and is very familiar with Clemens's defensive array.

Although this kind of attack is terrifying, it is still bearable.

The high-ranking knight Godwin is supervising the battle in the north, blocking the attacks of the three legions of Fabuti, Had, and Hermann. There are more high-ranking warriors there, and he is needed to be there.

At this time, the person following Fred was a seventh-level high-level wizard enshrined in the Earl's Mansion. Looking at the ripples of varying sizes outside the city wall, he couldn't help but encourage the Earl, "Sir, this kind of attack can't break the defensive magic circle. If the other side wants to force an attack, they can only pay with human lives."

Fred nodded slightly and asked, "How long can the magic circle last?"

The high-level mage was speechless for a moment before he answered loudly, "At least a month!"

Although catapults and mortars cannot break the defensive magic circle, they will also consume the magic power of the defensive magic circle.

After a round of attack on the city, the defensive formation will consume a magic crystal or exhaust the magic power of a low-level wizard.

The Clemens defenders did not have many magic crystal reserves, and only Earl Fred knew how much the Earl's Mansion could still take out.

A seventh-level high-level wizard casts defensive spells to block the stone bullets from the invaders, but he would be exhausted after three or five shots. However, the magic power injected into the defensive magic circle on the city wall is enough to block ten times the number of heavy blows.

According to the current attack intensity, this high-level mage felt that the opponent's siege equipment might not be able to last for a month.

Leo, on his part, gave the order: "Switch to iron bullets!"

Upon hearing this, the artillerymen pushed over the solid iron balls prepared at the back. After the propellant was loaded, two low-level extraordinary strong men, each two meters tall, worked together to stuff the iron balls weighing several hundred kilograms into the barrel.

Ivan's Second Musketeer Regiment was also on standby in the rear. Seeing this, they approached Leo with great anxiety, "Such a large shell will not explode?"

He now has a rough understanding of the principles of firearms and knows that in order to launch an iron ball weighing several hundred kilograms, the amount of gunpowder needs to be multiplied several times, and the chamber pressure on the barrel will also increase exponentially.

He had also seen cannons exploding from afar. Even the scarlet armor of the Wind Knights could not withstand the fragments of the exploded barrel of the Thousand-Man Cannon. This huge cannon, which had a larger caliber than the Ten-Man Cannon, was intimidating to look at.

Leo looked at the city destroyer full of industrial beauty and chose to trust the gunsmith of the river bend. "I don't think it will."

It was he who came up with the idea of ​​siege mortars. He originally wanted to make a few primitive cannons from the Middle Ages, such as the Urban bronze cannon and other siege weapons.

However, Hewan's metallurgical industry has reached the top level in the empire, capable of casting large wrought iron cannons. After hardening treatment, the quality of the gun barrels has been greatly improved.

With technology like this, it would be a waste to build the Urban Cannon.

The Three-Gate City Breaker is the pinnacle work of the River Bay artillerymen, and can withstand a chamber pressure that is more than ten times that of the original bronze cannon.

Such a cannon can fire solid iron bullets weighing hundreds of kilograms a thousand meters away and still ensure the safety of the gun barrel.

And Leo and others don't have to worry about becoming sacrificed by their own artillery like Master Urban.

This time, the roar from the city breakers was even more terrifying, and the shells were accompanied by an eardrum-tearing whistle, attracting both sides on the battlefield.

After a round of bombardment, the defensive formation shook violently, the ripples continued to spread, and the entire curtain collapsed!

The high-level wizard beside Fred looked at the shattered curtain with a pale face, and without waiting for the Earl to speak, he hurried away to repair the defensive magic circle.

A round of bombardment shattered the defensive formation, but the huge walls of Clemens were not damaged. Leo ordered the artillerymen to switch to ordinary stone bullets and continue the bombardment.

Iron bullets weighing several hundred kilograms are very valuable in the river bend, and Leo is reluctant to use them to exchange for the walls of Clemens.

Medieval city walls without magical defenses could not withstand even the cannons of ten thousand men, let alone the siege cannons specifically designed to destroy the city walls.

In the training before the expedition, the artillerymen of the city destroyers mastered a large number of city-breaking techniques through Ai'er's knowledge system.

They would first bomb the city walls at distances of about twenty meters apart, wait until huge cracks appeared on both sides, and then concentrate their firepower on bombarding the walls between the cracks.

They would also use basic ballistics to calculate the reasonable angles and destroy the blockhouses on the city walls one by one.

In just one morning, a huge gap more than ten meters wide appeared on the west wall of Clemens, and the twelve-meter-high wall turned into a large earth slope six or seven meters high.

The watchtowers on the city walls that were strong enough to withstand the attacks of catapults were also removed one by one, turning into piles of ruins that hindered the defenders' actions.

This was originally the defenders' most relied upon city wall defense facility besides the defensive array.

Without the obstruction of the defensive array, the catapults of other legions also began to show their power, gradually clearing the defensive equipment and thick battlements on the top of Clemens City.

Without the protection of the battlements, the defenders on top became human targets. Apart from going down to the city to escape, continuing to guard the city walls would only lead to death.